


Father Figure

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dorkiness, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Plot Twists, Prison, Revelations, Self-Discovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-06 21:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13420143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Gregory Trevelyan, a young, bumbling but well-meaning (wannabe) rogue Inquisitor, decides to personally take part in the mission to get Blackwall (or rather, Thom Rainier) out of the Orlesian prison, feeling that he owes a lot of his coming-of-age to him. But things do not go according to plan, and Gregory discovers that the revelations about Blackwall are not over.





	1. Chapter 1

Straining to her utmost both to maintain her balance as she stands on tiptoe on a rickety, sadly creaking stool in front of the much taller Inquisitor, and to push back the giggle that keeps bouncing at the back of her throat at the sight of his glistening, vividly pink perspiring face, Scout Harding makes another attempt at making the buckles meet over his sucked-in stomach... No, no, wait - not Scout Harding! She told him to call her Lace! On the night of the picnic fiasco - she told him to call her Lace!  
  
He made a special effort, almost whipping his poor horse into a lathering, wide-eyed frenzy, to arrive at the rendezvous point in the recently discovered corner of the Hissing Wastes half an hour ahead of the rest of his entourage (oh, what a glare Cassandra shot at the back of his head when he spurred on his mount and charged off into the dark, dusty unknown; he thought she would burn off half his scalp). The idea was to leap gracefully to the ground in front of her, and, with a flourish, produce the small flower-patterned Antivan guitar he had been learning to play, together with a neatly wrapped - pink bow and everything - picnic basket, and vesture grandly towards some rock on the horizon; it did not matter which rock, just one scenic enough, silhouetted effectively enough against the dazzling silver disk of the moon; and offer her to sneak off for a cozy little meal. Just the two of them. Away from their responsibilities of Inquisitor and lead scout, tracker of fantastical paths in the wilderness, beholder of the wondrous majesty of the untamed forests and the swelling sea, owner of the quickest wit and the steadiest hand and the most beautiful sun-kissed face and glimmering emerald eyes... Ahem. In reality, all he managed to do was fly off head first into a dune, his feet still tangled in the stirrups, as his exhausted horse decided that it would not take another step. Luckily, in a feat of breathtaking archery finesse that he only saw out of the corner of his eye (too busy wriggling in the pile of sand that had broken his fall), the scout made a swift and precise shot, pinning the zooming basket to the trunk of a nearby gnarly tree, dry as a clean-picked bone and just as sickly white in the moonlight, and thus saving the picnic... But the guitar, having smashed against a boulder, was irrevocably destroyed... As was the poor Inquisitor's pride.   
  
And it was at that moment, while she was yanking him out of the dune and helping him dust himself off, and he, in turn, was spluttering out a series of endless 'I am sorry, Scout Harding's and 'I did not mean for it to go like this, Scout Harding's, that she smiled at him genially, and said,  
  
'Oh, you can call me Lace'.  
  
To which he thinks he replied,  
  
'And I gam Eggory... I mean... I am Gregory. Gregory Maxwell Aedan Thomas Killian Archibald Trevelyan. Or... Or just Gregory. That's... That's my name... Though... Though my sisters used to call me Egg... Because I was so small and pale and fat... Damn... I have no idea why I am babbling like this...'  
  
She smiled again, ever so patient with him, before finally succeeding in steadying him on his feet.  
  
'It's all quite all right, Your Wor... Gregory. The secrets of your past are safe with me. No-one will suspect a thing. Especially since you are neither of the two now'.  
  
It's true that he has been spending far more time outdoors, where the burning sun beams have done a pretty good job roasting him up and making him all squinting and ruddy, than he used to as the youngest and tiniest out of seven siblings, who would often get left behind, locked in the Trevelyan clan's vast, empty house, completely forgotten by all the people gushing over his better, brilliant, more accomplished sisters. And underneath his soft, wobbly chub, there is now a layer of hardened muscle, honed by constant battles against demons and cultists and even dragons (bet his sisters never even dreamed of facing down one of those during their precious jousting tournaments!).  
  
...Which does not make it any easier to squeeze himself into one of the spare Inquisition scout uniforms, which have definitely not been tailored for a lumbering human like him. That's why he needs so much help from Scout Harding - Lace - who has been diligently packing him into a vest that they have, um, borrowed from the trunk of an elf who does not currently need it as he is convalescing after a run-in with a nasty-tempered wild bronto in the Emerald Graves.   
  
While Gregory was lost in reminiscences, Lace finally braved the fastenings, and is now looking over the fruits of her tireless labours with a smug glint in her eyes - her gorgeous eyes! Ah, so very gorgeous that he could squeal, making a delighted sound that none of his sisters could ever match... But, he had better not. They are on an important mission, after all.  
  
'Well then,' Lace says, bumping her fist against his shoulder before she begins to cautiously clamber off the stool.  
  
'All done. Ready to mingle with us common scouts. Are you still set on personally taking part in this prisoner switch-up? Lady Nightingale wouldn't...'  
  
'Lady Nightingale thinks I am off talking sense into those pesky relatives of mine, who would forget who I was when I was younger, and now all want a piece of the Inquisitor's fame,' Gregory scoffs (pleasantly surprised at how eloquent his little tirade has turned out; definitely better than 'Um, I am Egg').  
  
'And yeah, she wouldn't want me on this mission because she'd think I'd just trip over my own feet or sneeze at the wrong moment or start waving my daggers too soon, and sabotage the whole thing. But I will have you know that I have been training in stealth! I may still be far from becoming a bard like I always wanted, but I won't let you guys down! I won't!'  
  
His jaw tightens when he finishes speaking, his eyes flaring like bared steel. Lace grows quiet and serious, and when she does open her mouth, her simple question falls heavily into the deepening silence like a stone into still water.  
  
'This... This is really personal for you, isn't it?'  
  
'Is the Divine Andrastian?' Gregory quips back mechanically - but his tone is mirthless, and his chest suddenly feels all crumpled up with a tight, sickly feeling.  
  
Of course this is personal. More than that: he can't think of a single damn thing more personal than this. The... The man they thought was a Warden - Blackwall, Rainier, whatever his name is - he is his friend. And... And mentor, he supposes. The kind of mentor Gregory always longed to have in his father - who, on most days, never even noticed that he was there; never took a closer look to make out the features of the tiny egg-like shadow that shuffled in to greet him in the morning, after a stately procession of tall, full-figured, monumentally beautiful sisters. Never gave him the time of day, except to remark on yet another one of his failings. 'Ah, Gregory. Lagging behind on your lessons again, they tell me'. 'Gregory, I don't remember seeing you in our box at the Tourney today... Oh, right, you were too slow and missed our carriage'. 'What are you doing with that weapon rack? The real blades are not meant for you'. 'Go to your room for the rest of the dinner. This so-called moustache you are trying to grow is making everyone retch'.  
  
At first, Gregory was afraid that Blackwall would end up treating him like this too. He would often catch the Warden's... pretend Warden's intent, appraising look on himself whenever he burst into tears of frustration as yet another practice move with his supposedly elegant bardic daggers turned into a clumsy flop. Or whenever he found himself pouting because none of the companions - not even Varric, blast it! - tried to excuse themselves and sneak out when he presented his hundredth rendition of the epic ballad of knights and dragons that he was working on. Or whenever he stormed off melodramatically, to fling himself face down in the snow with a weak moan after Cassandra was done scolding him for some rash decision or other.  
  
He did not like that look Blackwall gave him - did not like it at all; it made him feel like a tiny bug that was being slowly squashed under the weight of an impossibly huge boulder. The fact that this look would sometimes be accompanied by a disdainful mutter, 'What a bloody five-year-old' did not make things any better either.  
  
And so one day, when he could not stand the boulder's excruciating descend upon his cracking skull any longer, Gregory cornered the (sort of) Warden on the path from the lake to the stables, up which he was striding, flushed and slightly messy-haired with hard work, on the way back from the logging site, where he was fond of helping out the Haven labourers.  
  
'I know you hate me,' Gregory declared, puffing out a gush of white vapour, pulling himself up to his full height and darting, hair-like, left or right whenever Blackwall attempted to swerve around him.  
  
'I know you think I am a child, a milksop that shouldn't have been allowed to lead! Well, I am aware of that - and I hate myself for this even more than you do! I hate that I hog attention, that my temper is all over the place, that whatever I do, I am never perfect at it! And... And it's fucking killing me! I could never impress my father... I can never impress you - the man I really, really admire, and... kind of want to be some day... There must be something wrong with me!'  
  
At that point, his rapid, aggressively high-pitched voice snapped, and he concluded with his eyes cast down and his feet trampling sheepishly at the snow.  
  
'I... I just don't want you to end up hating the entire Inquisition because of me... I don't want you to leave... Please? I am just a brat with a glowing hand; it's people like Cullen and Cassandra and you that actually matter. And I can't stand it that my... me-ness is pushing you away'.  
  
Blackwall met his outburst with an odd look - not angry, far from it... Soft, sad even; Gregory thinks he knows why, now. After the speech on the gallows, in the shade of a swaying apple tree that seemed to weep dark-green tears as the raindrops splashed over its glossy leaves.  
  
'You don't want to be a man like me, Gregory,' Blackwall said to him after his confession in Haven, closing his fingers round the young Herald's forearm. 'But... But you can grow up to be a man... A good man... If you get a hold of yourself. I guess... You've never had anyone around to show you how?'  
  
Gregory shook his head meekly - and Blackwall never made another sound except for a muffled huff of understanding.  
  
And since that moment, he has always been there for him. He still is, in a way, as even with him locked up in that cell, even with the horrible revelation burned into his mind like a scar from a recent fire, Gregory cannot help but smile and feel lighter on his feet, even taller somehow, when he conjures Blackwall's rugged, wild-bearded face in his mind, focusing on his intent grey eyes, and the sound of his voice, stern but caring, telling him to stop, to think, to breathe.  
  
He is the man who, for the first time in his life, took a moment to praise him - for a battle well fought (he did trip over his own feet again, but at least the demon's dead!), for a life saved, for effort made.  
  
He is the man who, when Gregory made a childish fool out of himself, did not only rub his mess in like he was a mabari pup that had peed on a prized carpet, but sat down with him, and tried to figure out how he could fix things, whom he needed to apologize to, when he had to watch his tongue - both of them often growing frustrated, cursing and raising their voices, but both vowing not to call it a day until they reached a resolution.  
  
He is the man who stoically endured Gregory's blathering about his crushes - first Cullen, who turned him down, then Lace, who is still tolerating his disaster-riddled courtship - and helped him navigate the bizarre maze of... gentlemanness with a gruff joke or two, and a smack on the head when Gregory grew too absorbed in his Romantic Suffering of Doom.  
  
He is the man that first taught Gregory to believe in himself.   
  
And even if - damn, his heart swells up with a hot, pained pulse at the very thought - his little lessons were all part of the lie he was living, the confidence and courage and respect towards himself and others that Gregory took away from them are all very, very real. And he feels like he owes Blackwall - Rainier - for that.   
  
So yes, he is going to be there is person when Leliana's people get him out of the Orlesian prison. He has to be.


	2. Chapter 2

They arrive at the capital in a modest, nondescript mule-drawn cart - and Gregory does mean, in a cart. As in, packed inside it, under an upper layer of wooden planks that has apples piled up over it. A simple but effective disguise. Quite enough to convince the guards at the gateway that their expedition chooses to pass through, on the less glittering side of town, away from the graceful arches and the flapping flags and the imposing gilded and marble monuments to a fierce-looking Andraste, a woefully hungover Maferath, and a whole pride of crowned lions.  
  
The guards are quite satisfied with their inspection, after leaning down, huffing a little, and sweeping off a fruit or two to crunch (which must be pretty awkward, what with the odd wobbly-edged slits they have for mouths in their mask-like visors.   
  
From what Gregory can hear, plastered as he is in the nigh on airless, sweat-tinged dark, the bodies of other scouts pressing at him from both sides, the guards also take a moment to whistle at the 'lovely little peasant rabbit' that is sitting at the reins. Poor Charter; she could easily have sliced up their fingers, sheared their eyebrows, and chopped off whatever else a rude, fat-headed man might want to waggle at a woman, all with a single flick of a dagger - but she heroically suffers through their advances, all for the sake of being allowed through the gates.  
  
When the grunting, groping buffoons are finally done, the cunning little vehicle veers off the cobbled street into a side alleyway where the rats are peeping incessantly, like someone is shuffling up and down squeaky polished floors. A few moments later, Charter tugs at the reins (or, well, so Gregory imagines her doing, judging by the creaky pull of the leather), and the apple cart rumbles to a halt, with one final lurch that makes the hidden scouts all smoosh their limbs together in an exceptionally awkward manner.  
  
The planks of the apple-covered layer have a rune embedded into them, making the entire construct quite easy to hoist up, even for a single elven woman. That's one of Dagna's ingenious inventions, meant to be sewn into the bottoms of travelling backpacks and such, for carrying tremendous weights on the road, like caches of weapons and armour confiscated from bandits, or bushels of elfroot.  
  
It was first tested out by Sera, who stuck one such rune to the bottom of Solas' sofa while he was napping (ahem; exploring the Fade - Solas hates it when his grand ventures beyond the borders of the mortal world are referred to as naps) and then dragged it effortlessly into the middle of his rotunda, right below the circular gallery on the upper floor. In that gallery, leaning over the railing with his face contorted by silent laughter as if he was about to make the biggest sneeze, there stood Dorian. Waiting for Sera's signal. The moment the signal came - in the form of a muffled fart noise, which Sera let out of her lips the way a cloak and dagger conspirator lets out a secretive whisper - Dorian winked at Varric and Gregory, who were observing the elven theatrics at a parchment-buried table, while pretending to do paperwork, and proceeded to toss down a rope he had ready. Standing on tiptoe, her bare heels slipping out of her flattened, worn shoes, Sera caught the rope and swiftly tied it to the sofa - which, thanks to the rune, Dorian heaved to his level with only one hand, while examining his manicure on the other with demonstrative carelessness.  
  
The plan was to get Solas all the way up to the rookery, 'to be pooped on by em birds or sumthin' - but he woke up before it came to fruition. Still, this proved the effectiveness of the rune - as a slyly grinning Dorian and an awkwardly giggling, lip-biting, shifty-eyed Gregory did their best to emphasize to the advisors, who had come rushing in from the keep's every corner at the sound of Solas' indignant ranting, to behold him suspended in mid-air on a slightly spinning sofa.  
  
And now - now the rune has found a use under far graver circumstances. Now, its pulsing silvery light is weakly breaking through the dank murk of a vermin-infested alley on the outskirts of Val Royeaux - the starting point of a stealthy crawl towards the city prison.  
  
With the planks lifted and the apple cargo rolling softly off through the mud, the scouts can, at long last, stretch their limbs and slip off the cart. Lace is among the first to eel free, landing on the ground with the natural grace of a cat and then reaching to Gregory to get him off the cart with minimal scrambling and panting.  
  
To his own surprise - and kind of nervous, jittery joy, for he can tell that Charter is watching him, her reflective elven eyes darting up and down his clumsy figure like specks of cold light - the Inquisitor turned-would-be-scout completes the task quite decently, and it is not long before he finds himself standing upright among scattered apples, warily eyeing the tall dark silhouette that emerged out the cart after him.   
  
That is the Inquisition captive that they will be switching for Black... For Rainier. Before packing him underneath the fake apple cargo, Lace took out a flask of that purplish powder that rogues use to daze their enemies into a wobbly, sleep-like state.   
  
Gregory had quite a few mishaps when learning to toss the bulbous little things across the battlefield, before Blackwall started practicing with him to improve his aim; during a skirmish or two, he shattered the flask and released the lulling purple vapours too close to himself or his companions, causing them to curl up on a spongy carpet of green moss, and doze off right in the shadow of some lumbering ogre or something.  
  
But in Lace's case, she didn't even have to do any tossing. She merely blew a poof of soft purple smoke in the captive's face while the other scouts were writing his thick hairy arms behind his back. Thus subdued, he should not be making any attempts at taking advantage of being moved from Skyhold to his new execution point, and running off.  
  
The powder has worn off somewhat by the time they reached this alleyway - but only enough to allow him to stand on his own two feet without constantly being propped up, and to keep him from veering to the side too much (the way Cassandra did when Gregory smacked one of his sleeping powder flasks over her shield; she sleep-talked too... something about Varric's chest hair). Aside from that, he is still not entirely conscious, and stumbles obediently wherever the scouts shepherd him to, by pulling at the end of the chain that is wrapped around him, crisscrossing his bulging torso a couple of times.  
  
He does have about the same height and built as... as Rainier - and, as far as Gregory can make out under the rim of the burlap sack pulled over his face, a pretty similar bushy beard.  
  
But unlike Rainier - very, very much unlike Rainier - this captive does not at all make Gregory feel like breathing freely and smiling to himself with the thought of his own strength and worth. There is an oppressive, disconcerting aura hanging over the man like a dusty shroud, or one of those heavy velvet curtains framing the portraits of Clan Trevelyan's ancestors (Gregory accidentally collapsed a drape like that on himself as a child, while trying to make our if his great-grandmother really was squinting at him judgmentally).  
  
Gregory did not preside over his sentence in person, but Lace did give him a sneak peak over the dossier Leliana gave her on him. Apparently, the fellow is - was - a slaver, one of the thugs supplying the Venatori with 'experimental subjects' (mostly 'harvested' from the scattering crowds of refugees left homeless in the smoking, fiery wake of the civil war in Orlais) to grow the sharp, hotly pulsing, malignant crystals of red lyrium in their flesh. A man that used to earn gold off the suffering and death of innocents - including children. The way Rainier did, once. And yet, he gets to be slipped inside Rainier's cell and executed in his stead, while Rainier himself walks free. All because he has taken the young and blundering Inquisitor under his wing.  
  
Could Gregory... Be doing the wrong thing? Playing favourites? Twisting justice for personal gain? Turning into precisely the sort of leader he has been striving not to be?   
  
Blackwall - Rainier - himself would not want this. He would look at him with that deep regret in his eyes, so poignant that it hurt to hold his gaze for long, and tell Gregory to go. To turn away from him. To leave him to the fate that he deserved.   
  
But... But Gregory does not think that his friend, his mentor, his... his father figure deserves to die! Not after all he's done for him - for the Inquisition! So maybe... Maybe this slaver does not deserve to die either? Maybe if his sentence is reviewed, he might be able to do good work, to atone for all the lives he has taken? Maybe Gregory should not have listened to Leliana, turning to another advisor for help... Maybe...  
  
'This... This is wrong,' Charter says, with her voice like the abrupt fall of a blade in one of those Orlesian contraptions for cleaving people's limbs off.  
  
They have reached the corner of the back wall encircling the prison, blocked from the guards' view by the thicket of wilting, floppy-leaved plants that thrive as best they can on a slurping, whitish-brown trickle of sewage water. In here, under a loosened stone in the part of the wall where the mortar is peeling off, tracing a crack that looks like 'the side of a fella's stomach with his dick all hard, y'know', they were supposed to find a dead drop. A key to the dungeons, wrapped in a tell-tale red rag.  
  
'I got a gal in the prison kitchens,' Sera said, with an assured nod, after Leliana weighed all possible options and decided to let her in on the plan.   
  
'I mean, not gal gal - I am not really her type... But she's a friend, yeah? That fat prick who runs the prison had her brother whipped half to death, so she's always game to pull one on him. She'll get you a key, whisper bout the guard rotations, anything. Anything...'  
  
Her voice quivered at that point, and she gave both Gregory and Leliana a long, red-eyed look from under knitted eyebrows.  
  
'Anything to get Beardy home'.  
  
But instead of the key promised by a friend of Red Jenny, the Inquisition scouts are greeted by a dead drop of an entirely different nature.  
  
A guard, with his limbs bent underneath him at an unnatural angle, his uniform tinted a muted grey with blotches of drying mud, and his mask askew, revealing a pallid face that seems even more frozen and expressionless, and a thin line, almost like a fine stroke of dark ink, which is running across his throat.  
  
'He wasn't killed here,' Charter muses under her breath, squatting down next to the corpse, while a shock-stricken Lace is peering silently over her shoulder. 'No blood on the ground. I guess he was just dragged into a blind spot to buy the killer time to... do whatever it was they thought worth disposing of a guard'.   
  
She edges sideways, knees still bent, and examines the muck underfoot. Which is doubtlessly giving an expert tracker like her a chockfull of clues... Except that deciphering these clues is taking up time. Time that, according to their plan, should have been spent using the key and getting into the prison. Time that is now eating away the effect of the sleeping powder.  
  
So that the slaver is already grunting and stirring under his sack. About to fully awaken.


	3. Chapter 3

Below the thick, coarse layer of burlap, the captured slaver's long, deep-throated yawn sounds like an ominous underground rumble. Lace starts at the sound and, turning away from Charter, scurries up to him, a tiny stout figure facing down a waking giant (he really does seem like one; although not particularly tall, he appears to grow more and more imposing the longer Gregory looks at him). Bracing herself for a charge to subdue him again.  
  
The other scouts, though not as close to the slaver as the dwarf, also tensen into position - including Charter, who has finally distracted herself from inspecting the guard's body. But Gregory, their supposedly fearless Inquisitor, falls into one of his embarrassing stupors, the muddy ground swimming away from under his feet.  
  
If Rainier were here, he would have touched his shoulder, his palm a weighty, comfortingly solid point of warmth amid the icy haze that keeps Gregory shackled, and called to him gruffly to remember to blink and breathe, and set the jammed gears of his mind back in motion again. But Rainier is not by his side; Gregory has to snap out of it without him - and he is not certain he can do it, not when this lumbering hairy giant is looming over Lace like that. He should dash forward, push her out of his reach, maybe pull his own pants down in the process. Like he did when crawling towards a wounded but still impeccably composed Vivienne (really, she looked at worst mildly annoyed that the fresh tear in her gilded satin bodice was ruining the precious fabric with a nasty blood trace, and that her restorative magic was not doing enough to close the gash in her flesh, much less wash off the stain).  
  
At the time, Gregory had somehow yanked himself back to his senses without Rainier's help - as the fourth member of their little adventuring team was Cassandra, brought over for her dragon-hunting heritage (and although she had grumbled under her nose that she was her own person, not just another puffed-up Pentaghast, she was doing quite splendidly, weakening the dragon with blow after slashing blow, and even managing to loosen the creature's massive scaly jaws and force it to spit out a positively giddy Bull).  
  
Focusing his chaotic, sort of smudge-like thoughts, Gregory pulled himself together and set off, constantly tripping over his own feet and not really managing to stand back upright, across a flat, blistering stretch of orange sand, while a few feet away from him and Vivienne, the dragon that had knocked the Enchanter down with a crushing swipe of its spiked tail, was busy trying to chew down a rather morbidly unflinching Bull, who was grinning from ear to ear and admiring how huge the beast's teeth were.  
  
Vivienne certainly... did not appreciate the fact that somewhere halfway to her rescue, Gregory's greaves had caught against a pesky cactus, and he ended up reviving her while effectively mooning the dragon. And Gregory felt awfully mortified. When he hurried to dress himself back and share a healing potion with the Enchanter, who never stopped incinerating him with a revolted glare even as her skin turned from a beautiful dark brown to a sickly, greyish dun, her head began tilting limply on her neck, and she reached the point of fainting from blood loss. And also when, during the subsequent 'Hey, check this out, we killed a dragon!' celebration at the Herald's Rest, Bull leaned back in his chair, brandishing his mug of oily, pungent-tasting liquor that does not leave a sliver of living tissue along a person's throat, and yelled at a passing Lace,  
  
'Hey Harding, you lucked out! Boss here has a fantastic bottom!'  
  
But then, Gregory somehow surmounted the bewildering maze that the short stretch from the bar counter to the tavern entrance- still hoarse and making weak mlem-like noises with his unwieldy, cotton-like tongue, and not quite aware of where his own feet had snuck off too after he had recklessly gulped down that swill Bull was having. Once outside, he veered half-blindly towards the stables to sob about his humiliation into Rainier's padded jacket. After hearing out what little he could discern among the wheezes and drawls of the weakly flailing Inquisitor, Rainier shook his head, dragged him by the collar to a trough of cold water, and said,  
  
'Once you've sobered up, let Bull know that you didn't find his joke funny. He'll understand, I think. But for what it's worth... I got into plenty of stupid shit when I was your age. I just knew how to twist it into an intriguing tall tale. Presenting myself as a hero instead of the clown I was'  
  
Gregory still remembers the look on Rainier's face when he said that: like something unseen had grabbed him by the throat, blocking his windpipe and making every breath a tremendous struggle, while blood first rushed to his face in a hot crimson tide, then ebbed away, leaving Rainier paler than Gregory's own warped, gagging reflection in the trough.  
  
'The fact that you're ashamed...' he told him, while making sure that he washed up. 'It says a lot about you. It says that you are honest'.  
  
The conversation made Gregory feel a great deal better about his inappropriate dragon-fighting methods - once the nausea faded, that is. And right now, he wouldn't have minded going through the same mishap. If that meant he reached Lace in time.   
  
But no. All he can do is fumbling try to remember how to move and to blink, stupefied by the thought of what the slaver might do to Lace if he breaks free... He does not think he has ever feared like this for anyone.  Even himself. Except maybe when Blackwall - just about to turn into Rainier - vanished from Skyhold. Coming to the stables and not finding him there... Yes, that had about the same petrifying effect on Gregory.  
  
And a fat lot of good being petrified did to him, or anyone. Gregory's confusing whirl of thoughts and memories may have taken a lot of words to describe, but in reality, barely a couple of moments pass between the first inklings of life under the burlap, and that suddenly flash when the captive slaver lunges forward, grunting like an enraged bronto, tosses his head from side to side to shake off the sack (which must have gotten loosened up somewhere on their journey), and, before the other scouts fall upon him, raises his chained arms as high as his bindings allow him, catches Lace's head in the triangular gap between his shackled fists, and presses her forcefully to his heaving chest, her face flat against grimy, sweat-soaked rags, two little ruby specks getting added up to the freckles on her forehead. Droplets of blood, seeping from the raw indentations across the slaver's forearms, where the chains saw through his skin with the strain of holding on to Lace.  
  
'Untie me,' he growls, narrowed eyes darting back and forth through the gap between the matted fringe of hair and the beginning of his knotty beard. They are so bloodshot - as a side effect of the powder; Gregory knows from experience - that his whites seem almost black by contrast with the pale-grey irises.  
  
'Untie me - or the stunted little bitch has her runt's skull turned to paste!'  
  
This insult is like the lash of a whip - which, at long last, spurs Gregory into action. Groping instinctively for the dagger at his belt, he pounces, still not quite feeling his limbs - but no longer because of the benumbing fear for Lace; what has consumed him now is fiery rage. And all his musings about maybe sparing the slaver's life are - at least for a time - out of the window.  
  
This has to be the same rage that would so very often drive Rainier to fling himself, screaming a battle cry, into the wriggling grey coil of clammy, rotting darkspawn arms after the creatures as much as made a dent in one of his companions' armour. Not even caring that he did not really have that Grey Warden magic protecting him from the Taint; not thinking about anything except protecting the people he cares about. And that... That is what Gregory would really like to be doing as well. Back under dragon fire, when he tried to help Vivienne; or after the revelation of Rainier's past, when he set his mind on helping him anyway; or right now, when Lace is being strangled by a man who turned people into red lyrium husks for a living.  
  
She is not helpless, though, the wonderful, resourceful, amazing Lace. By the time Gregory's daggers hit their target, the slaver is already flopping in the mud like fish during dry season, brought down into a comical prostrate pose on his back by Lace's well-aimed kick into the tender part of him that was right at the level of her feet. The yoke of his chained arms is still resting on her neck, but he is no longer attempting to shatter her bones, too overpowered by pain, for she continues to kick at him as she lies on top of his stomach.   
  
Luckily, Gregory misses her when he joins the pile on the ground,  his daggers carving a strip of flesh off the slaver's oily, pockmarked cheek. He pokes at him a few times more, still seething at the echo of the man's disgusting slur, which does not cease pounding through his mind. The slaver, in turn, sinks his teeth into Gregory's wrist, the snap of his jaws strong like a mabari's (and Gregory times has... experience with these war hounds, not all of it rosy; take that time when the Blades of Hessarian tried setting their dogs upon him).  
  
But no matter how hard the captive bites down, writhing underneath him and Lace, Gregory stubbornly refuses to let go of his dagger, only beginning to breathe deeper and grind his own teeth harder when the pain becomes too much to bear. It's no big deal, really. Rainier, for one, has endured far worse for keeping him and the others safe.  
  
The scuffle may have gone on and on, and Gregory may even have had a chance to do some more... serious knifework, like he always wanted when imagining himself as a stealthy bard that slits throats with such a fine technique that the person marked for assassination still walks about for a short while, none the wiser, before their head rolls off their shoulders. But what does put an end to it all is an arrow, fired by one of the other scouts into the slaver's socket.  
  
As the glinting, slightly barbed metal tip pierces the socket (making Gregory think stupidly, with an uncontrollable lurch of his stomach, of those frilly little canapés the Orlesians serve on gilded platters), the man lets out a single short, almost surprised squeak, and turns quite still. Finally, Gregory can slide off his sack-like form and aid Lace with disentangling herself from the slaver's limbs before deathly stiffness sets in.  
  
Their eyes meet a few times in the process, and Gregory always looks away, the flushed skin of his cheeks feeling like some sadistic blacksmith has decided to make him try on a full-face metal helmet while it is still blistering-hot. This... This is not how he imagined grinding his body against hers. Not that he ever... actually... thought of that at all! Not in full earnestness! Not outside run-ins with some bothersome desire demon or other in the Fade, which would usually get interrupted by Solas, who would send the creature scurrying off back into the green fog with a brusque phrase in some ancient language, and then turn to Gregory with an air of lazy amusement and tease him,  
  
'Youthful fantasies do get one carried away, do they not?'.  
  
Ahem. Back to the present.  
  
While Gregory is blushing and sheepishly apologizing to Lace for inconveniencing her in any way, the scout who made the shot - a young elven man, who is almost more flushed than his blundering Inquisitor - is trying to explain himself to Charter (whom he seems notably afraid of... well, who wouldn't be?).  
  
'I... I don't know how it happened! I... I must have acted on reflex! And now... now we don't have a prisoner to switch Rainier for!'  
  
Charter purses her lips.  
  
'Stupid and regrettable, this whole outcome. But it looks like we will need a Plan B anyway. Listen'.  
  
Stepping lightly over the rancid creek of sewage water, she ducks into the shrubbery and beckons the others after her. Approaching the wall, they hear a tumult of voices, coming from the other side. And growing ever louder.  
  
'High alert, everyone!' they scream - well, more or less. That's approximately what Gregory reads in their frenzied Orlesian gargling.  
  
'Thom Rainier has escaped! Again! His cell is empty! And where in the Maker's name is Raoul?!'  
  
'Right here, I believe,' Charter finishes the phrase in Orlesian, slanting her eyes at the dead guard.  
  
'And oh, Lord Trevelyan,' she switches back to Common to address Gregory - which he barely catches, because his heart has decided to respond to the guards' outcries with a thunderous drum.  
  
'When I was looking over... Raoul's corpse, I discovered this. Clenched in his fist'.  
  
Stretching out her gloved, long-fingered hand, she reveals a snatch of crumpled fabric - which poor Raoul could have ripped off the clothes of his killer, in a struggle not unlike the one Gregory and Lace had with the slaver just now. And embroidered on that fabric, turning ever clearer as it slowly smoothes out, is the image of a rearing horse, splashing about in a stream of water.  
  
The Trevelyan family crest.


End file.
